Título

CYTOKINES PROFILE IN OCULAR FLUID OF INDIVIDUALS WITH UVEITIS: PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Objetivo

To better understand the pathophysiology of uveitis, we analyzed the intraocular fluid cytokine profile of individuals with uveitis.

Método

Aqueous or vitreous humor samples of 35 individuals with active uveitis were analyzed: infectious uveitis (IU) [ocular toxoplasmosis (OT) (n=10), herpetic uveitis (HU) ( n=10), other infection (n=3)] and non-infectious uveitis (NIU)(n=12). Participants undergoing senile cataract surgery were controls (n=2). Twenty cytokines, functionally classified as pro-inflammatory (INFLAMMA, n=12), immunoregulatory (REG, n=5) and repairing (REPAIR, n=3), were analyzed by multiplex microbeads immunoassay. Cytokine functional profile based on the detection rate was determined for each study group (cutoff: ≥1.3 for numerator predominance, ≤0.7 for denominator predominance).

Resultado

Clinical and sample data are shown in Table. Cytokines levels (Figure) and detection rates did not differ among the OT, HU and NIU groups, except for IL-10 in all-group analysis (p=0.019), though not significant in the 2-by-2 analysis (HUvsOT, p=0.057). MCP-1, IP-10 and TGF-β1 were detected in all samples. IL-8, IL-4 and IL-10 were detected in all uveitic samples, except for IL-4 in one sample. IL-8 levels were 2.9x higher (234vs81.7pg/ml) in IU than NIU. VEGF and FGF levels were 2.1x and 1.7x higher in NIU than IU (45.7vs21.4 and 71.6vs42.9 pg/ml, respectively). TNF-α, IL-12p70 and IFN-γ levels were respectively 9.9, 1.5 and 14.9 folds higher in OT than HU (34.1vs3.2, 3.1vs1.9 and 51.4vs3.4pg/ml, respectively). REG/INFLAMMA IL-4/TNF-α (2.4vs0.8, p=0.002) and REPAIR/INFLAMMA FGF-2/TNF-α (9.7vs1.3, p=0.035) level ratios were higher in HU vs OT. In the global functional cytokine detection profile, HU had a predominant REPAIR profile vs INFLAMMA and REG cytokines, while NIU had a predominance of REPAIR profile vs REG cytokines.

Conclusão

Our preliminary results indicate that OT displays a more diverse and intense INFLAMMA cytokine profile and a potential prominent role for REG cytokines in HU and for REPAIR cytokines in NIU.